What should have been a simple undertaking today turned into a comedy of errors.  Only, it wasn't funny.

According to the school district web-site, today was the day to take Adam to his middle school to pick up his class schedule for the upcoming school year.  So, we got up and drove the 25 minutes to his school.  When we went to enter the front door, there was a big sign announcing that schedules would only be handed out to those with a proof of immunizations which, of course, I hadn't thought to bring.  Let me point out that there was no mention of this requirement on the website.

 So, we got back into the car and drove the 25 minutes to the house, got his immunization record, and drove the 25 minutes back to the school.  Despite the inconvenience, I must admit I was a little smug because I'd gotten his vaccines updated back in May, so this was going to be easy.

Immunization record securely in hand, we waited in line to get his schedule, only to be handed a red sheet of paper that said we needed to get his schedule at the office, where we would show the shot record.  Again, I was smug.  We had this under control.

So, we went to the front office and waited in a long line of people who were irritated because they didn't know they needed to get their kids immunized and they'd come to get their kids' schedules only to be turned away.  But, not me.  Oh, no, I was prepared.

When we reached the front of the line, I smiled at the harried lady as I handed over Adam's record, as if to say I understood how hard it must be for her to deal with frustrated parents all afternoon, but here is my son's record and this is going to be so smooth and we are all going to laugh about this later.

Until she informed me that Adam was missing one shot.  He's supposed to have two chicken pox vaccines and he only had one.

What??  

That couldn't be right.  I'd taken him to the doctor months ago for the sole purpose of getting his shots updated, and left assured that he was all set to go.  After sputtering and arguing--pointlessly--for a few minutes, I was excused from the line and told to go call my doctor's office to see if some mistake had been made and it had just not been written down.

So, I called the doctor's office and it turned out he WAS missing the shot.  The nurse even had the gall to laughingly tell me that they were getting a lot of 12 year olds in their office who were missing a chicken pox shot.  It was all I could do not to yell over the phone "THAT'S BECAUSE YOU AREN'T GIVING THEM!"

But, I held it together and got an appointment for tomorrow for Adam to get the missing shot.  Then, I stormed out of the stupid middle school and commenced driving home.  I was almost to the house when it occurred to me that there was probably other stuff Adam was supposed to do to be ready for school--like get his ID, netbook, locker, etc--so I turned the car around and drove the 25 blasted minutes back to the school.

Only to be informed that those other things would happen the first week of school and all he needed to do today was pick up his schedule.

At 44 years of age, I thought I was done hating middle school.

Nope.

First of all, click here to listen to this.

Good.  Now you're in the proper mood to appreciate the rest of this post.

Today, I started rereading these:

:

Because in October, I'm joining my friends here:

To see and enjoy this:

(The castle, of course.  Perv.)

I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!

I'm pretty sure I want Lukie's life.

Every day.

Seriously, every dang day.

 It grieves me to announce the sad demise of my Dino-Pod.  Brad had it hooked to the boat stereo at Bear Lake, and when they hit a big wave, it knocked the USB stick right out of my Dino-Pod, thereby causing the immediate death of my Top 58.

So, like the Dreamy Hubby that he is, Brad bought me a new iPod for my car. 

This one holds far more than 58 songs.  I spent the afternoon filling it with songs from iTunes, and it currently has 84 of my favorites with lots of room to spare.

It feels so good to have my songs back.  This is my current song-obsession, which I used to listen to at least daily on the Dino-Pod.  Since its demise, I have missed my daily wonderings about this song.  Why is she wearing wooden shoes with her wedding gown?  Why are her eyes broken?  Why would dancing with marionettes make her happier?  Basically, this song haunts me, and every time I hear it, I come up with new theories to answer my questions.  And, I always love the strong guitar strumming after the chorus.  The passionate angst gets me every time.

 So, today I listened to it many, many times in a row to make up for the lost days, and Brad just walked by me on his way to the kitchen humming it to himself. 

And to those of you who just clicked on the link and now have it running through your brain, making you wonder how someone can laugh with a lover's tongue in a lullaby...

...you're welcome.

 After a week of wearing a band around his ears, Adam was able to take it off and show off his new look.

He is THRILLED with the results, going into the bathroom over and over again to look at himself in the mirror.

I'm not going to lie--I'm still a little sad.  He looks so different.

 

Apparently, Pepper isn't done wakeboarding, because today he made this.

The idea was for Luke to put it on, and Pepper would pull him across the pool (Pep wanted to use the riding lawn-mower to pull him, but I put the kibosh on that).

Yep.  It worked about as well as I thought it would.